Emily's Bront's Wuthering Heights

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Introduction

Emily's Bront�'s Wuthering Heights is regarded as one of the greatest novels of passion ever written. It is the story of two lovers who try to resist the social differences separating them and keep their love alive. It is a love between Catherine and Heathcliff. In this book Emily Bront� shows how Catherine is deeply in love with Heathcliff but she lives in a social class which leads them to be apart, understanding social class as a group into which people can be divided according to their social and economic level. For people in Victorian England, the quality of daily life rested on an underlying structure determined social class. The concept of class did not solely depend on the money that people had, but it depend on the source of their income, as well as on birth and family connection. Most people were understanding and accepting of their place in the class hierarchy. Class was also revealed in their manners, speech, clothing, education, and values. Victorians believed that each class had its owns standards, and people were expected to adhere to the rules from a class above or below one's own. Throughout the book, Catherine tries to discover who she is and what exactly she wants. Chapter 6 and 7 are the main chapters in the book where the social classes are determined and Catherine's love for Heathcliff is forced to be suppressed. ...read more.

Middle

(1992:134). At this moment in the novel, Heathcliff disappears only to return, after a mysterious absence, having acquired wealth, education and being a gentleman in appearance. Catherine marries a man of the upper-class society and is forced to end her love affair with Heathcliff. Although "[her] love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beath" (82), Catherine chooses to love Edgar Linton in which her love is "like the foliage in the woods" (82) only. She loves Edgar because "he will be rich and [she will] like to be the greatest woman of the neighbourhood, and [she will] be proud of being such a husband" (78). This shows her desire to be a grand woman. She says, "it would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now, so he shall never know how I love him"(80). Catherine chooses Edgar to be her husband not because of her feeling but because of his identity. Although Catherine does not spurn Heathcliff, Catherine marries Edgar because Heathcliff is only a servant. Michael Wheeler describes him as alien and unfamiliar not only as an aggressive Yorkshire farmer but as a being whose very origins are uncertain (1985:70). It is impossible to think that Catherine does not really love Edgar with some part of herself. She marries him because of her love of society and aristocracy. Edgar Linton is a kink, gentle, civilized man who represents the themes of Thrushcross Grange an opposed to the themes of Wuthering Heights. ...read more.

Conclusion

During this period, when the oldest son received the land, he was expected to actually do something besides just mulling about, as it seems the characters Wuthering Heights did. Aristocrats made a lot of money off of their land.Barry Supple writes: It is an oversimplification-but a useful one- to envisage nineteenth-century society as being divided into three important groupings, each highly stratified within itself. These were: the upper classes, rich and largely dependent on landed estates for their wealth and influence, with farmers perhaps considered as appendages to them; the middle classes (business, administrative and professional), growing in numbers and wealth, and covering many types of occupation, income and interest; and the working classes, distinguished by their subordinate position in society and workplace, and by their relative poverty, which nevertheless embraced a wide range from material desperation to modes sufficiency. (1978:92). Wuthering Heiths can be appreciated as a social novel treating class: the educated and cultured professional middle class, the rough yet propertied farming class and the workers. Although there are many different important messages through all the characters in this novel, the main value is the changes which occur in and between the characters. It is a love story which deals with the social classes and the suppression of true feelings. Wuthering Heights is a tragedy becauses of what happens when the characters finally discover what was truly meant to be. Wuthering Heights bestows a moral value onto the reader of discrimination because of class difference and true heart-break. ?? ?? ?? ?? 8 ...read more.

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(page 268 lines 14 - 25). Heathcliff tries to be with Catherine even after her death. The attraction for each other was so strong that even her marrying another man and dying in childbirth does not end the story of their love. Emily Bronte describes this passion as enduring beyond the grave, very real and unconventional.

Her frenzy scares Linton so much that he agrees lets her out. Chapter 29 has another supernatural incident. Heathcliff, with no respect for the dead, had the gravedigger open Catherine's coffin while he was preparing Edgar's. The coffin was opened, and Catherine's face looked the same as the day she died, nearly twenty years ago.

"I promised mamma that I wouldn't say one word to him, and I didn't." It is almost as though Edgar is acting like a child, not the young man he actually is. After Heathcliff is sent away, Catherine continues to have tea with the Lintons.

on Hindley, 'If he were a born fool I should not enjoy it half so much', ''I've got him faster than that scoundrel of a father secured me, and lower...Don't you think Hindley would be proud of his son, if he could see him?...And the best of it is, Hareton is damnably fond of me!

Wuthering Heights is a moorland area, and is situated on high moors. Moors are very rugged areas, which are very difficult to live in. The terrain is rough and rocky, and the weather is so powerful. It is an importantly dangerous location to live in, which is very uncultivated.

In connection to Heathcliff, Nelle seems to be in a state of confusion and contradiction. She often says that she feels sympathy towards him, yet she frequently insults him telling the reader that he is ' a savage beast'. Her psychological needs tend to sway her narration backward and forth

The Heights are extremely gothic, a quote to prove this is "I paused to admire a quantity of grotesque carving languished over the front." Through out the novel, Heathcliff is treated badly. Even from the moment we meet him as Mr Earnshaw returns with him as an infant, everyone wants rid of him.

amongst those at the Heights, shown with Lockwood's first visit when he mistakes Cathy for Heathcliff's wife and Heathcliff responds 'with an almost diabolical sneer'. This use of the two houses to demonstrate how the relative residents are so contrasting and therefore so tense with each other is also apparent with Isabella's marriage to Heathcliff and subsequently their relationship.